“I will bring you some books to read, if you would like them,” said Eric.
Her great blue eyes gleamed with interest and delight.
“Oh, thank you, I would like it very much. I have read mine over so often that I know them nearly all by heart. One cannot get tired of really beautiful things, but sometimes I feel that I would like some new books.”
“Are you never lonely, Kilmeny?”
“Oh, no, how could I be? There is always plenty for me to do, helping Aunt Janet about the house. I can do a great many things”—she glanced up at him with a pretty pride as her flying pencil traced the words. “I can cook and sew. Aunt Janet says I am a very good housekeeper, and she does not praise people very often or very much. And then, when I am not helping her, I have my dear, dear violin. That is all the company I want. But I like to read and hear of the big world so far away and the people who live there and the things that are done. It must be a very wonderful place.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go out into it and see its wonders and meet those people yourself?” he asked, smiling at her.
At once he saw that, in some way he could not understand, he had hurt her. She snatched her pencil and wrote, with such swiftness of motion and energy of expression that it almost seemed as if she had passionately exclaimed the words aloud,
“No, no, no. I do not want to go anywhere away from home. I do not want ever to see strangers or have them see me. I could not bear it.”
He thought that possibly the consciousness of her defect accounted for this. Yet she did not seem sensitive about her dumbness and made frequent casual references to it in her written remarks. Or perhaps it was the shadow on her birth. Yet she was so innocent that it seemed unlikely she could realize or understand the existence of such a shadow. Eric finally decided that it was merely the rather morbid shrinking of a sensitive child who had been brought up in an unwholesome and unnatural way. At last the lengthening shadows warned him that it was time to go.
“You won’t forget to come to-morrow evening and play for me,” he said, rising reluctantly. She answered by a quick little shake of her sleek, dark head, and a smile that was eloquent. He watched her as she walked across the orchard,